


The Writer who Fell from Grace with the Sea

by oshimaontheshore



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Depressed Katsuki Yuuri, Literary AU, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Trans Katsuki Yuuri, Trans Male Character, Yuuri has a lot of trauma and that is ok
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-27
Packaged: 2018-12-01 22:30:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11496060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oshimaontheshore/pseuds/oshimaontheshore
Summary: Yuuri Katsuki is the first young writer to achieve international celebrity status since David Foster Wallace. His debut novel, a surrealist chronicle of millennial anxiety and aimlessness, unexpectedly garners a wide audience and an astounding array of literary prizes. The glittery invitations to award ceremonies arrive in droves, as do awestruck fan letters-not that Katsuki would know, as a closet agoraphobe who has hidden himself in a remote cabin in the mountains of Saga Prefecture. One day, when a platinum-haired man from his fragmented and muddied past suddenly reappears, Yuuri is forced to confront his deep-seated fear of vulnerability.He had always been timid.





	1. Beauty burns whomever it touches.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A beautiful stranger knocks on Yuuri's door.

“I’m not sure if this is at all appropriate.” The delicate stranger at his doorstep made a pregnant pause, full of apprehensiveness and repressed hope. “You might want to throw me out, or even call the police.”

Yuuri could only stare dumbfoundedly at this beautiful man who had somehow found his home address. Yes, he could call the police on this stranger, for having the nerve to find him when he had absolutely no wish to be found, when he had very clearly intentionally recused himself from the world in his tiny backwoods cabin. Yuuri could slam the door in the face of this gentle man, whose eyes brimmed with kindness and whose neck was wrapped elegantly in a gray wool scarf that he yearned to touch.

He could shove this stranger out onto the porch, and be left just as alone as he was before. Yet Yuuri was paralyzed by his languid voice and warmly cautious demeanor. _He’s approaching me as though I’m a traumatized stray animal,_ he thought to himself.

_Maybe that’s what I am._

The stranger seemed perturbed by Yuuri's silence. “I only wanted to know if you’re alright. I can leave now,” he said in a muted tone. He ran his gloved hands through his thick platinum hair with a palpable nervousness. “I-I just know we writer types work in a functionally lonely profession, and I couldn’t hope but note that the literary world's new favorite was missing from the party.” The stranger smiled coyly, but took a step backwards as to not seem overly bold.

“In Russia, we just had the Millennium Literary Prizes. I had the honor of presenting your book—“

Before Yuuri even realized it, the cabin door had slammed shut, and there was a terrible snapping sound as his visitor’s fingers were caught—

_No!_ Yuuri panicked as he came to terms with what he had just done. 

The stranger let out a pained yelp, and Yuuri swung the door back open. Tears began to well up in the stranger's soft blue eyes and run down his milky cheeks. _Had he hurt him that badly?_

 _“_ Please come in! I am terribly sorry—I have no idea why I just did that.” Yuuri cursed himself for being so impulsive and stupid.

 _Please forgive me_ , Yuuri adds in his mind.


	2. Categorical Impossibility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yuuri attempts to repair the damage before realizing the identity of his visitor.

 

Yuuri sorted haphazardly through his cluttered medicine cabinet, all the while cursing himself for so having so carelessly harmed the innocent stranger at his doorstep. As he searched desperately for a bandage that could accommodate a grotesquely shattered fingernail, his visitor’s words reverberated in his mind with a strange glint of familiarity…

_We literary types work in a functionally lonely profession…_

A half-opened bottle of anxiety medication tumbled unceremoniously out of the cabinet and onto the floor, sending pills flying everywhere like a kaleidoscope of pressured thoughts.

He could hear the stranger mewl from the kitchen table, where he sat injured, writhing, bleeding, _pouting_ \--

 “Just a minute! I’m coming!” Yuuri’s heart leapt inside his chest, his sense of panic renewed.

His declaration was answered with the squeak of a chair against the kitchen floor. “Yuuri, are you sure I can’t—“

“Stay in the kitchen!” Yuuri ordered with uncharacteristic authority, afraid that his visitor might wander into the mess that was currently occupying the bathroom. “I’m _coming!_ ”

The stranger sunk back into his chair with a palpable air of resignation.

Finally Yuuri had found the correctly shaped bandages in the deepest crevice of his medicine cabinet, along with sterile gauze and alcohol wipes. He darted back to the kitchen, where his maimed visitor had lain his mop of platinum hair on the table, and pulled out an ice pack from the freezer.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri said as he handed over the ice pack with a twinge of regret and shame at his own incomprehensible impulses, hoping that his mysterious visitor was not frightened by his sudden burst of volatility. “It was a complete accident, I have no idea why I--”

The platinum mop lifted itself from the table, unexpectedly revealing a gentle, even serene face. Hadn’t this man just been gravely injured by the person he travelled so far to meet?

“Thank you, Yuuri. Though I must admit, your anguish is certainly not warranted given the mildness of my injury.”

The stranger sighed as he tended to his bloodied hand. Yuuri was struck quiet by the radiant calmness and confidence of his visitor. He had far been too overwhelmed with the catastrophic waterfall of anxiety that had overcome his rational mind to truly process the delicate form before him. Now that he could fully take in the image of his visitor, Yuuri found himself entirely enchanted.

His tender oceanic eyes and gentle demeanor gave him a magnetic presence that could bend time itself. Suddenly all of the little worries that plagued Yuuri’s mind seemed to evaporate into the air and float away, so that only his mysterious visitor remained as the center of attention.

Yuuri was part of a generation that had no choice but to revel in absurdity, to languish in the chaotic assignment of meaning to the meaningless, to find destiny in nothingness. Life was not—no, _could never hope to be_ like the plot of an early novel where death and marriage were the only endgame. There was something ethereal and divine about his visitor’s arrival that dared to rupture his slow but irreparable slide into mindless isolation.

Something deeper than instinct pulled Yuuri away from the person he was just hours before, and toward the man sitting in front of him now.

And yet his philosophical reverie was brusquely interrupted.

“I must admit, this setback _will_ keep me from writing.” The stranger tilted his head with a dramatic flourish. “I’ll have to take time off work…request that I be given an audio dictation software…perhaps learn to write with my left hand!” He hid his face in his uninjured hand, the other cast aside in a melodramatic gesture. “Ah! What a mess! But I’m so lucky to have such illustrious company.”

_…In Russia, we just had the Millennium Literary Prizes…_

He continued, “Perhaps I could get to know you a little better, Yuuri.” He threw his arms into the air for a languid, catlike stretch, careful not to put stress on his injured hand. For a stranger in an unfamiliar place, he seemed almost too comfortable with his surroundings. “After all, I’m here all by myself, caught between the forests and the mountains of Saga Prefecture, and my Japanese is sadly only rudimentary…”

Yuuri felt as though he was falling away from his little kitchen as a cut balloon would fly up into the sky. The voice of his visitor sounded far away, and was eclipsed by a poignant ringing in Yuuri’s ears.

_…I had the honor of presenting your book…_

It was categorically impossible that the man in front of him could be person who Yuuri thought he was, and yet the tiny chance that it was in fact him was undeniably marvelous. After all, Yuuri had never actually attended any of his own award ceremonies, and he would never be able to recognize other literary figures on sight because they, like he, were reclusive and avoided having their pictures taken by the media. This stranger was far too young, and so handsome it was unfair, but there was only one person who presented Yuuri’s novel at the Millennium Literary Prizes, and it was none other than Viktor Nikiforov.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience, and for reading. I'll be back next week with more.

**Author's Note:**

> Update 8.9.17
> 
> Chapter 3 is definitely coming! Unfortunately I've been traveling a lot so it will be another week. Thanks always for your support.


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